lotcfandomcom-20200213-history
Fallen Angel Mission 2: Delayed Reaction
Keepers Set Down South of Remus' Base Delayed Reaction begins without a mission briefing and picks up immediately after Mission 1: Dionysus. The Keepers' transport touches down, drops off Ambrosia and her death squad (Tank, Stillwell, Jasmine, Thanatos), and departs. According to intelligence reports gathered by Keeper Command, Remus' pirate base should be directly north of the drop zone. After surveying the area, Ambrosia determines that Remus has cloaked the base from sensors and visual detection. The player is given control of the Keepers with instructions to find and shut down the generators powering the cloaking field. Ambrosia ordered that a nuclear bomb not be used to destroy the generators as she and the rest of her squad do not want to be irradiated. The generators are also too large to destroy with conventional firepower so an EMP pack is the selected takedown measure. The Keepers need to affix the EMP pack to the generators and the pack will short out all of its circuitry. The Keepers provide the player with a previously unprecedented level of power for a squad based mission in LotC: 1) Keepers regenerate health in a similar timeframe as Zerg 2) Keepers' energy is powered by onboard micro-fusion generators and never depletes 3) Keepers weaponry are vehicle grade particle beam armaments allowing the player to slice through both infantry and enemy armor easily 4) Keepers have access to Cloak and Lockdown (and with no energy depletion, these abilities can be used indefinitely) The player must move the Keepers through wooded areas, carving out pirate patrols until finding a flag doodad. The flag represents the entrance to one of the three generators. For purposes of this mission description, the flags will be referred to as left, middle, and right. The Middle Path While slaughtering pirates with the Keepers is easy, the generator path puzzles are not. These puzzles are trigger driven and if the player errs during this phase of the mission, the Keeper he/she controls is instantly killed regardless of health. Shown in the screenshot above, the 'middle generator' path is protected by several lines of pulsing explosions. The player's objective is to move the Keeper he/she controls through the path between explosion bursts. The explosions represent electrical discharge from the generator at the end of the path. If the player moves through while the explosions are pulsing, the Keeper is instantly killed. At the same time the player attempts to move the Keeper through this path, sieged arclite tanks fire on the Keeper from elevated positions and are only visible for a second or two before fog of war sets back in. If a player cloaks, the pirates send a science vessel to the area to reveal the Keeper to the tanks. The player will experience greatest success by allowing the tank to fire on the Keeper once and immediately using the lockdown ability. There are two tanks total. The player will be able to lock down the tanks and time movement through the explosions to reach the generator at the end before the lockdown effect expires. Some pirate guards are also on the lower elevation between the explosive lines of effect and are easy meat for the player. Once at the generator, the player needs only to move the Keeper next to it to set an EMP disruption pack onto it to shut it down. The Left Path The path on the left is a winding route of higher elevation paths the player must navigate through to reach the generator. The player will be given control of Ambrosia for this mission. Unlike the middle path, the left path has no walls of explosions. Instead, the generator emits a single discharge which runs the entire winding upper elevation path. If Ambrosia is caught on higher elevation when the discharge moves through, she will be killed instantly. The goal of the player is to move forward on the path and be certain that Ambrosia moves down a ramp to lower elevation before each discharge cycle. The lower elevation safe zones are earmarked by yellow supply depots (visible through fog of war) and are guarded by various pirate personnel. To succeed in this part of the mission, the player needs to stop just long enough to lockdown any science vessels near the safe zones. If the player tries to run to the safe zone without locking down the science vessel, the pirate forces will cut Ambrosia down. Conversely, if the player tries to slaughter the pirate garrison from higher elevation, the electrical discharge will catch the player and kill Ambrosia instantly. Once a player locks down the science vessel, he/she needs to move Ambrosia to the lower elevation 'before' engaging hostile forces. Once at lower elevation, and under cloak, Ambrosia can freely dispatch the pirates with little risk. There are a total of three safe zones which must be reached before the generator at the end (which is also in a safe zone). The player should be cautious of sieged tanks near the second and final safe zones (lockdown is the best ability for this). As with the middle path, a player needs to move Ambrosia next to the generator to set the EMP pack and shut it down. The Right Path The right path earned Fallen Angel considerable criticism from the community due to its difficulty. Some players even emailed NexusCore and indicated they refused to play Fallen Angel due to this part of the mission. The Right path has walls of electrical discharge explosions just like the middle path but in addition, there is a blue winding discharge which runs from the generator all the way to the end of the path. Even if the player moves the Keeper between the walls of red explosions, the blue explosion can snake through. There is no (obvious) safe spot from the blue explosions and if the Keeper touches the red explosion OR the blue explosion, the Keeper is instantly killed. Unlike the middle path, there are no troops stationed along the right path (for obvious reasons). The player is able to 'shoot' the blue explosions however. Due to the buggy nature of the triggers, this was not always guaranteed to work. As such, a player should save as often as possible during this part of the mission and will rely upon luck as much as skill to make it to the end. Avoiding the red explosion walls is the same as the middle path and requires timing only. Move the Keeper through between blasts. The Keeper should be uncloaked so that the unit automatically fires at the blue explosion. If the Keeper is cloaked, the unit will not automatically fire and the player will not be able to manually target the blue explosions before the trigger for the next explosion fires. In summary, move through a wall of red explosions, save, shoot the blue explosion, save, move through next wall of red explosions, save, shoot the blue explosion, save. Repeat this pattern until the end of the path. Then move the Keeper next to the generator to set the EMP pack and disarm it. Disarming all three generators will cut power to the cloak around Remus' base and the structures will blink from invisible to visible in a short cutscene. This sets the stage for the mission's final boss encounter. Mid-Mission Cutscenes; Some History of Angel/Ambrosia After the player disarms EACH of the generators along the three paths referenced above, a cutscene will play in which backstory is provided regarding Angel/Ambrosia. It is revealed in a conversation between her mother and the supervising surgeon, Dr. Jelico, that she was in a coma. During a board of medical review meeting two years later, it was also revealed by Dr. Jelico that all of Angel's wounds from the Zerg attack on Dionysus had been healed. Nothing is revealed about how her grievous wounds healed, the nature of which included scarring from acid burns (which presumably occurred when she was left behind with a group of hydralisks during the Dionysus incident). Another cutscene involved voice-overs in which Angel woke up from her coma and escaped. The hospital director and the military investigator attempted to piece together what transpired by interrogating a med-tech who Angel assaulted. Based on this conversation, Angel left her room and rendered two security guards near the archive room unconscious to gain access. Angel stole the personnel files of four Confederation servicemen before leaving the hospital. The four men were Maxwell Hayes, Avery Clutter, Daryl McGovern, and Raymond Murray; they were the pilots and co-pilots of the dropships which left Angel behind on Dionysus during the evacuation. The final cutscene shows Angel assassinating each of these men. In the first scene, she follows Hayes' car into the Galveston-Morey parking garage on Earth, kills the security guards, kills him and blows up his car without saying a word. In the second scene, she travels to a gritty bar where she walks up to the table where Raymond Murray is sitting and without saying a word kills him. She then turns her gun on the civilian crowd killing as many of them as she can. In the third scene (pictured above), Angel travels to an industrial complex to locate Avery Clutter. She loads and fires a grenade launcher at the facility killing Clutter and several civilians and sending the rest fleeing as they scream. The final scene shows Angel in a stolen siege tank entering a military base where Daryl McGovern is in protective custody (ConFed having found him before Angel did). Angel destroys the entire base to eliminate her target. Boss Fight The boss fight in this mission is against a pair of defensive generators which power an electromagnetic disruption net. With Remus' base now visible to sensors and the naked eye, his back-up plan was to deploy the net. Any electronics, including cloaking devices, which attempt to pass through the net are shorted out. The only way for the Keepers to proceed is to destroy the generators powering the net. Unlike other generators in the mission, these possess defensive capabilities. The level one attack involves avoiding electrical discharge. The generator will discharge electricity every few seconds. Prior to the discharge, the player will see red flags which will show the path of the discharge. The player needs to remove Keepers from the path between the generators and the flags. The player must destroy the generators with the Keepers' weapons. This is only possible when the sentry drones (Science Vessels) are not patrolling the area. If the sentry drones are visible (as shown above), the player can not attack the generators. The electrical discharge from the generators will destroy the drones however, allowing the player to get lucky in this respect. The level two attack involves moving the player out of an explosive area of effect. The generators are armed with short range plasma beam cannons which will cover a large area with superheated liquid (similar to napalm). Prior to firing the cannons, two to three blue electrical disruption fields will appear so the player knows the target areas. As with the flags, the player must move the Keepers out of these areas. The areas are large so the player should move the Keepers as far from the disruption fields as possible. As shown above, if the Keepers are even on the edge of the explosion, they will still be killed instantly. After the player destroys one of the two generators, the other generator will increase its alert status and increase the intensity of its attacks. Instead of just two flags for electrical discharge, the generator will now discharge electricity in eight directions (the player should see '8' flags). Instead of two blue disruption fields the player should see three consistently. The generator also has a doomsday final attack in which it hits the entire battlefield with its plasma cannons on overload. When this is about to occur, the player must move the Keepers near the generator to a blue flag instead of away (like with the other attacks). Red explosions (harmless to the player) will slowly path toward the generator from all directions (indicating charge-up) eventually increasing in speed to three charges a second. As shown above, the generator envelops the entire battlefield in plasma. If any Keepers stray outside of a small radius near the blue flag they will be instantly killed. Once this final attack subsides, the generator will resume level 2 attacks until destroyed. After its destruction, the disruption net around Remus' base goes down, allowing for the Keepers to cloak and enter the complex undetected. This completes the second mission of Fallen Angel.